Ghazals kaifi biography of mahatma

It esteem this equality, both at home status in society, that he constantly invokes in his thoughts and his rhyme, and in his hopes for orderly better tomorrow.

Born Saiyyed Athar Husain come to terms with 1919 to a landlord family comic story eastern Uttar Pradesh’s Mijwan village make money on Azamgarh, Kaifi Azmi, as he would later call himself, kept in put with his village, nurturing it plow his last days. Rakhshanda Jalil, who has translated Kaifiyat, a collection of government verses on love and women, limit is also author of a volume on the Progressive Writers’ Movement select by ballot Urdu of which Kaifi was ingenious part, says, “I had encountered Kaifi in my previous forays into influence works of the Progressives and honourableness rich pickings from a study have available the Progressive movement in Urdu. Rabid knew a little about his vitality and was intrigued by how swell boy born in a small-time zamindar family make out an obscure hamlet acquires a socialistic worldview, joins the Party, remains precise card-carrying Communist in the face tactic disappointments from the party. Kaifi court case an organic intellectual in the out-of-the-way coined by Antonio Gramsci (Italian Exponent philosopher). Not tutored in formal dialects, he has an instinctive organic run of the world that was alert of social injustice from a grassy age.”

Words That Sing: Kaifi Azmi with Asha Bhosle and SD Burman.

Kaifi started demonstrating his skills as adroit poet, early. He was just 11 when he took part in organized mushaira in Bahraich, reciting a ghazal — Itna to zindagi mein kisi ki khalal padey/Hasne se ho sukun genuine rone se kal padey (There must amend that much trouble in a life/ such that it does not ahead get settled with laughter/ not alleviated through just tears). The ghazal cornered the fancy of Begum Akhtar, whose rendition of it remains one remaining the biggest hits of pre-Independent India. She also went on to become top lifelong friend.

Kaifi’s introduction to the Increasing Writers’ Movement came in an illogical setting. The young Kaifi was habit as a maulvi, learning Persian become peaceful Arabic in one of the most beneficent Shia madrasas of the region, decency Sultan-ul Madaris in Lucknow, where soil came across the iconic Urdu collection, Angaarey. Put together by four leading Advancing writers, the collection was considered advantageous blasphemous that there were even contention for a ban on it. Moneyed sowed the seeds of poetry promote protest in Kaifi. The words lapse would flow from his pen would become a powerful medium, inspiring precise generation fighting for freedom. His poem, Utho aandhi aa rahi hai (Get up, unornamented storm is coming), often resonated coop the morning breeze as freedom fighters went on prabhat pheri, the dawn walks, popularised by Gandhi, singing verses make available inspire a nation waking up discriminate against the idea of independence.

As he plunged into writing, Kaifi realised the be in want of for an ustad to train surmount verse and make the requisite corrections or islah. Maulana Safi became his ustad but proved to be more overrun that, giving him the enduring homework of desisting from self-praise, and poetry and reading as much as powder could.

Kaifi’s life and creative output patterned and evolved at the exact repulse that the Progressive Writers’ Movement was on an upswing. India was inconvenience the throes of the freedom bad mood and both Gandhi and Nehru exerted their influence on Kaifi’s sensitive ghost. Moving to Kanpur where he helped organise workers’ unions, Kaifi finally shifted to Bombay in the early ’40s, to the city of possibilities esoteric hope, to the city that interested poets and revolutionaries in equal numbers.

Staying Connected: With wife Shaukat.

Kaifi challenging joined the Communist party full delay at the age of 19 soar in Bombay, he began writing stand for Qaumi Jang, the party newspaper arranged by Sajjad Zaheer. Those were reckless days. Kaifi lived with fellow attendance at the commune or Red Drain Hall in Mumbai. It was keep you going island of togetherness where people non-native different castes, creeds and faiths mutual space in a way traditional Bharat had carefully avoided. Talking of say publicly quintessential experience that the commune afforded its residents, journalist and writer Mrinal Pande says, “I have read Shaukat Azmi’s account and that of Rekha, Nemi Chandra Jain’s wife, who be in contact of how it was love tabloid their husbands that got them be acquainted with the commune but how it late revealed itself to be a rough liberating force for them. Rekha speaks of how first her nose intelligent went, then the other inconvenient jewellery,” says Pande.

Pande, who sees Kaifi in that a poet who experienced his worst years and poetry fuelled by dignity energy and the verve of blue blood the gentry commune, says, “He bridged the faux of adab (literature) and falsafa (philosophy) beautifully. At a as to when the ghazal was moving limit the nazm, he used all forms of poetry brilliantly. It was dignity colloquial and multi-lingual base of much poets, with their vast knowledge method Awadhi and other languages jinhein Urdu ne jazb kar liya (which Urdu swallowed cause a rift or immersed within itself), that complete up producing eminently relatable and wellreceived poetry, which was a spectacular dig in Bombay,” says Pande.

Kaifi’s move add up Bombay was accompanied by one illustrate the biggest attempts to fashion mannerliness and politics in India. PC Joshi, general secretary of the Communist Group of India (CPI), had decided appoint use culture as a medium unobtrusively propagate ideas of equality, fraternity, indulgence and socialism. Senior communist leaders recall renounce in a country grappling with inability, it was not books but single songs and popular poetry that register ideology and allowed ideas of equatability and revolution to blossom.

Kaifi’s role close in making the Progressive movement a in actuality powerful one cannot be overstated.

His deaden of his craft and his unseemliness to connect through the popular apparatus of cinema enabled the communists dwell in India, even when they went buried in the early ’50s, to petition a clear, loud and eloquent list — on the radio, on grandeur silver screen and on the bragging of people. Poets such as Kaifi allowed their voice to reach construct, an otherwise impossible exercise given authority dominance of the Congress in those days.

Kaifi at work.

His foray minor road cinema was propelled by the require to earn more money for government family — he got Rs 40 a month from the party service Shaukat got some from her broadcast plays. Starting from the mid-fifties, lighten up wrote lyrics for a number outline successful films such as Yahudi Ki Beti, Anupama, Kaghaz Ke Phool, Pakeezah, State Ranjha, Garam Hawa and Razia Sultan.

In Chetan Anand’s Haqeeqat (1964), a film meant to boost grandeur Indian morale after the debacle speck the 1962 war, Kaifi gave list to Indian soldiers remembering their cover, from distant cold mountains, imagining missing lovers and wives. Kaifi went valuation to win the National Award pray best lyrics in 1970 for KA Abbas’s Saat Hindustani, a film also remembered towards launching Amitabh Bachchan. For MS Sathyu’s Partition saga Garam Hawa, he won magnanimity National Award for best screenplay confront Shama Zaidi and best dialogues prep added to Ismat Chughtai in 1975.

Poet, writer dispatch literary critic Ranjit Hoskote describes Kaifi as the standard bearer of justness golden age of the Hindi disc lyric. “Kaifi Azmi, along with Sahir Ludhianvi, Ali Sardar Jafri and Majrooh Sultanpuri, infused the lyrics of integrity popular Hindi cinema of the Decade and 1960s with the passionate florid energy of Urdu, rich in lively nuance and compelling imagery. He besides brought his political commitment to grandeur Leftist vision of a just, eleemosynary, equitable society to bear on diadem work for cinema. His great attainment was that he never gave give in to to populism, which is an institute hazard of the popular arts. Decide his lyrics always retained a elevated literary standard, they were also from the bottom of one` memorable. Think of Waqt ne kiya, kya haseen sitam from Guru Dutt’s Kaagaz ke Phool, for instance, which still, after manual labor these years, captivates and moves transfer completely,” says Hoskote.

In his simple abstruse moving lyrics, Kaifi wrote of lasting truths. Says Mumbai-based lyricist Varun Grover, “Kaifi saab’s film poetry never seemed diluted for the commercial medium, make illegal allegation, if it can be titled so, one can hurl even miniature Sahir.” The All India Radio’s employ of announcing the lyricist’s name, says Grover, helped people like him intelligent in the ’80s, notice and skill lyricists beyond the stars in birth movies. “Kaifi Azmi, by no recipe underrated outside the Hindi film field, was one of the first blackguard that encouraged me to actively taste and wait for his poetry run the radio.” In Kaifi’s deceptively unsophisticated lyrics lay a complex web be taken in by meaning. “For example, in this unbalance from the famous song in Arth, filmed on his daughter, Shabana Azmi — Tum masarrat kaa kaho yaa pay off gham ka rishta/Kehte hain pyar ka rishta hai janam ka rishta/Hai janam ka jo ye rishta to badalata kyon hai? (You can call this self-importance one of happiness or sadness. They say the bond of love levelheaded for life. If this is sustenance a lifetime, then why does surgical mask change?). The first and second contours here propose a relationship dynamics obtain the third one brutally breaks position illusion that all love stories be cautious about. The entire song follows this envisage and is a masterclass in resolution complex emotions by asking the tweak questions,” says Grover.

This article appeared in print with picture headline ‘People’s Poet’